Being the mighty warrior that I am, I boast of my future victories in public, so that I may be forced to carry through with them. I hereby challenge myself to read and post reviews of these titles within one month:
Now Is Too Late2: Survival in an Era of Instant News. Gerald Baron. Edens Veil Media, 2006
Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide. Amy Shuen. O’Reilly, 2008
Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message. Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba. Kaplan Publishing, 2007
2 Comments | 
Uncategorized | Tagged: book review, marketing, My social media, PR, web2.0 | 
Permalink
Posted by paul baker
Patrick Riccards, who blogs at Eduflack, is rounding up communicators in education to participate in his new project, Educommunicators, an online community for marketing communications professionals in the education sector.
To date, Riccards says, “there has been no strong voice for the many marketing, PR, public affairs, creative, and general communications professionals that serve the education sector. Traditional PR societies have ignored education as an industry sector. And communications has been but a small part of the official education association infrastructure.”
Educommunicators aims to “give voice to education communications professionals, their profession, and their passions.” Riccards welcomes communicators working in all sectors of the education community–people with “unique perspectives who represent the full spectrum of the education sector.”
Sounds good to me. I’m on board.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: communication, education, My social media, PR | Permalink
Posted by paul baker
“Blogging is slow, it’s boring, it doesn’t generate buzz. If you want to make friends, go on Facebook; if you want to influence people, try Twitter,” says Richard Bailey at PR Studies. WIRED magazine’s Paul Boutin even says Twitter is to 2008 what the blogosphere was to 2004.
Yes, I consider Facebook fun, and helpful. And I occasionally Twitter. But I don’t find it influential because the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. At least so far.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: blogging, facebook, My social media, PR, twitter | Permalink
Posted by paul baker
Brendan Cooper offers a practical and friendly guide to getting up to speed with the whole social media thang. Thanks to Richard Bailey for the link.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: My social media, PR, public relations | Permalink
Posted by paul baker
How to do Everything with Podcasting.
Shel Holtz with Neville Hobson.
McGraw-Hill Osborne. 2007. 360 pp.
What can podcasting do for a business? That’s the wrong question to ask, say Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. Like any communication tool, podcasting should be applied as a solution, not as a goal in and of itself. “Podcasting ought to come up in larger discussions about ways to reach audiences, to convey particular messages, or to address specific situations and problems,” they advise.
Hobson and Holtz are internationally known business communicators, bloggers, and consultants. I learned of their work through their podcast For Immediate Release. Friendly and engaging, For Immediate Release focuses on the latest communications technologies and social media.
How to Do Everything With Podcasting aims to “provide a resource to anybody engaged with podcasting, from casual listeners to independent podcasters to businesspeople looking for a new communication channel.”
Besides detailing all the technical aspects of podcasting, Hobson and Holtz preach the gospel of strategic planning. Thinking about producing a podcast? First, address the question: What outcomes are you trying to achieve? Would it serve as a marketing vehicle, or to supplement public relations and financial communications, or to enhance customer relations, or to enhance customer support? And how will you measure the success of your efforts?
The authors emphasize that perhaps the most important is the podcast’s social aspects. They encourage building a social network around your podcast, which is as important as the software and hardware you use.
They offer many examples of podcasting done well. Purina’s Animal Advice podcast, for example, provides information pet owners can use; it does not ‘sell product.’ Stanford University podcasts offer faculty lectures, interviews, music, and sports content. Target groups include students and alums. IBM’s The Future Of …. Podcast reaches investors and features interviews with engineers, product managers, and others in the trenches—not with PR or marketing staff.
Getting people to listen is step one, the authors say. Providing content that people will listen to because it is interesting, valuable, or entertaining is step two. Step three is making sure the way you present the content reflects the value you would bring to your listeners should they shift their business from a bigger business to your business.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: book review, marketing, podcast, podcasting, PR, public relations | Permalink
Posted by paul baker
2011: Trendspotting for the next decade.
Richard Laermer
McGraw Hill, 2008. 305 pp.
First: The difference between a trend and a fad:
A fad is a “flash in the pan that doesn’t deserve mention,” says veteran Trendspotter Richard Laermer, while a trend is “something that is just beginning to percolate—but is happening in a significant enough manner that we can see how it’s going to change us.”
If you’ve read Laermer in Huffington Post or elsewhere, you know he is funny, blazingly smart, and … well… he loves to write. Among other titles, he is the author of Native’s Guide to New York (1989), TrendSpotting (2002), Full Frontal PR (2003), and and co-author of Punk Marketing (2007). He has contributed to Public Radio’s Marketplace program and he copublishes the BadPitchBlog.
Although it’s impossible to do justice to this 300-page book and its nearly 80 essays covering every conceivable topic part in contemporary life, here’s a stab at it. . . .
Do you want practical tips?
“If you’re not thumbing through business magazines on a regular basis, checking out industry blogs … and staying informed about the world, you’ll be left behind.
“You’ve got to evolve or die.
“Be a noncliché spotter of trends so that you don’t become obsolete or, worse, stale.”
Or do you prefer Gestalt?
Picture a tree, Laermer suggests. “The roots of new trends are in technology, while the branches are finance, travel, weather, sex, education, communication techniques, gracefulness, and societal changes.
“Most trends come and go, but some recur like the seasons. Rather than stemming from the vacillations of technology and pop culture, they are rooted in deeper phenomena . . . “perennial” or “meta- trends.”
Do you want research?
Laermer’s essays cite data from the census bureau, the FDA, the World Health Organization, the Harvard Medical School, and other studies. “By 2008 the median age of the workforce is expected to rise from 38.7 to 40.7. Contributing to these trends is the new influx of ‘boomerangs’—those boomer retirees who come back to the workforce after a short time away.”
Or do you prefer personal observation?
Laermer’s encyclopedic knowledge of popular culture informs many trends he identifies.
“Teens shall remain narcissistic. Those whom I dub Generation Broke … have their parents navigating and engineering their lives. They don’t subscribe to the so-called learning via the school of hard knocks, or making the grade, or rising up the ladder, or earning one’s keep.”
How about an insider’s view on the media industry?
“When you deconstruct the news … you need to know that most information comes not from sources who proffer it because they wish to “get the story out” (or are prodded to do just that), but rather from those who are paid to make sure the world knows about their latest glory. … “News is a consumer product just like all the others: it’s created by someone, for someone, with a single goal in mind—to make a profit.”
His web site www.laermer.com offers “essays, trend advice, ways to spot trends, and blog posts. It provides links to many other useful and entertaining sites too.
General readers will find this book entertaining, funny, and thought-provoking. Practitioners of marketing and public relations will take away some new things to try.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: book review, marketing, PR, public relations | Permalink
Posted by paul baker
Groundswell:
Winning in a world transformed by social technologies
Charlene Li and John Bernoff
Harvard Business Press, 2008. 286 pp.
You and I and half of American adults are using more online tools to connect, to find information, get support, compare products, rate movies, buy from each other, or post blog entries. But most companies and institutions still don’t understand this trend, and their customers are slowly dribbling away.
Charlene Li and John Bernoff call this evolving online activity the groundswell. In this very readable book Li and Bernoff draw from extensive research to describe what the groundswell is and to offer case studies showing how organizations have readjusted their thinking to take advantage of it.
Although the groundswell trend includes social networks and related technologies, the authors say, equally important is the change in consumer behavior. People are getting more things they need from each other, and less from traditional institutions and corporations.
Listening (and becoming involved in) the groundswell should help your organization find out what your brand stands for; understand how buzz is shifting; save research money; increase research responsiveness; find the sources of influence in your market; manage PR crises; and generate new product and marketing ideas.
Li and Bernoff caution that there is no single ‘right way’ to engage with the groundswell. Depending on the objectives of your company, you’ll choose among the following options: listening, talking, energizing, supporting, or embracing your audience.
Case studies examine how Salesforce.com uses an innovation community to involve customers in the design of new products; how a French credit union made customers’ suggestions a part of how it does business; and how a Canadian grocery store uses customer ratings and review to improve its products.
An instrument that Li and Bernoff use in their work at Forrester Research is called the Social Technographics Profile. “Social” refers to the people-to-people activities in the groundswell. “Technographics” refers to Forrester Research’s way of surveying consumers—it’s similar to demographics and psychographics, but focuses on technology behaviors.
The authors define six kinds of online consumer behaviors. Learning which types best define your audience (or clients, or communities, or target groups) is the first step in any strategy you take to reach them. The Creators are those who publish a blog or article online, maintain a web page, or upload videos at least monthly. Critics post comments on blogs or forums, post ratings or reviews, or edit wikis. Collectors save URLs and tags on a social-bookmarking service, vote for sites on a service like Digg, or use RSS feed aggregators. Joiners maintain profiles on a social networking site like MySpace. Spectators consume what the rest produce. Inactives—nonparticipants—still remain.
Nearly one in five of online consumers in the US—18 percent—are Creators. This means that a significant chunk of six of your target audience, customers, community, etc., are blogging, uploading video, and maintaining Web sites, and quite possibly discussing your company. One in four are Critics, and nearly half are Spectators.
This groundswell is taking place not just on desktops and laptops. The groundswell is about to get embedded within every activity, including mobile devices.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: book review, groundswell, marketing, My social media, PR, public relations, web2.0 | Permalink
Posted by paul baker
Now is gone:A Primer on new media for executives and entrepreneurs.
Geoff Livingston with Brian Solis.
Bartleby Press, 2007. 194 pp.
Marketing and PR professionals live in a world of constantly changing social media platforms.
Users want access to content anywhere and any time.
Marketing and PR professionals who successfully make the transition to this world have learned that “participation is marketing,” and that’s the theme of this book.
Geoff Livingston and Brian Solis have teamed up to offer a punchy little book that’s packed with insights into the principles that can guide communicators into, and through, the increasingly diverse and changing marketing environment.
Successful marketers will focus on social media principles rather than tactics, for example.
There is no more ‘audience.’ There are, instead, communities. By participating in online communities communicators can learn what the community wants and likes, and can create content that’s most valuable to it. The take away from this book: build value for your community, and work for them.
Public relations and marketing professionals who resist social media fail their companies and their clients.
Forget about pitching stories. Instead, engage in conversations. Social networks offer companies and organizations a way to engage potential community members outside of the confines of a corporate URL.
While PR 1.0 was all about controlling the message and broadcasting it, PR 2.0 encourages communicators to spark conversations to help people solve problems and discover new solutions.
This book is not intended as a primer, or a detailed how-to. It offers organizations and executives a foundation to help create social media strategies for their companies.
If even 15 to 25 percent of your buying community is using social media, or if a significant portion of your revenues are attributed to the right demographic, then it’s time to start and invest the necessary effort into new media strategies. … This important minority segment of your business will expand over time as adoption increases, and generations X and Y begin to dominate the workforce.
Create value for the community so they find your material worthwhile. This requires a) knowing what the community wants, b) understanding the intrinsic value the company has to offer, and c) being creative enough to deliver this value in a way that’s interesting and compelling.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: book review, marketing, My social media, PR, web2.0 | Permalink
Posted by paul baker
Book Review
The New Rules of Marketing and PR:
How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing, & Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly.
David Meerman Scott. Wiley, 2007. 275 pp.
“Standard marketing education still talks about the 4 Ps of marketing—product, place, price, and promotion—as being the most important things. That’s nonsense,” says David Meerman Scott. To succeed on the Web under the new rules of marketing and PR, he says, companies need to focus on their audiences first. When you understand your audiences, then begin to create compelling Web content to reach them.
This book could have been subtitled: “Content is King.” The theme runs consistently throughout its chapters.
David Meerman Scott maintains the site www.WebInkNow.com. For most of his career he worked in the online news business. He was vice president of marketing at NewsEdge Corporation and held executive positions in an electronic information division of Knight-Ridder. As such, he’s uniquely qualified to critique old-school PR practices in light of the realities of the Web.
So what is the best way for PR people and marketers to communicate directly with their audiences? Learn and use new Web tools and techniques. Scott says he is continually surprised that “only about 20 to 30 percent of marketing and PR people read blogs.” And when he asks how many people publish their own blogs, “the number is always less than 10 percent.”
Try to apply the old rules of advertising and media relations to the Web and you’ll fail fail miserably, he says. That’s because we’re now in an environment governed by new rules. So marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses, to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the Web.
Part I of the book explains how the Web has changed the rules of marketing and PR. Part II introduces and details each of the various media including blogs, podcasts, and viral campaigns. Part III offers “how-to” information and an action plan for using the new rules in your company.
This entire book is about search engine marketing, Scott says. Web marketing is about delivering useful content at just at the precise moment that a buyer needs it. “Organizations gain credibility and loyalty with buyers through content. Smart marketers now think and act like publishers in order to create and deliver content targeted directly at their audience.”
And how to reach those audiences? Create many different microsites—with carefully thought-out “landing pages” aimed at each target constituency. He emphasizes throughout the book to forget for a while your products and services. Focus your complete attention on the buyers of your products or those who will donate, subscribe, join, or apply.
And forget about the old school practice of “spending tens of thousands of dollars per month on a media relations program that tries to convince a handful or reporters at selected magazines, newspapers, and TV stations to cover your company.” Instead, reach the New Influencers: the bloggers, online news sites, micro-publications, public speakers, analysts, and consultants that reach the specific audiences that are looking for what you have to offer.
Case studies of people using the New Rules to their advantage include Gerard Vroomen, who co-founded Cervelo Cycles. His web site tells cycling enthusiasts compelling stories, engages them in conversation, and entertains them. “Because he uses web content in interesting ways and sells a bunch of bikes in the process, Vroomen is a terrific marketer,” Scott says.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: book review, marketing, PR, web2.0 | Permalink
Posted by paul baker
The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media
Paul Gillin.
Quill Driver Books, 2007. 236 pages.
Social media is PR’s turn to shine.
Why? The fact that people are downloading media and consuming it whenever and wherever they want has disrupted mainstream media. Social media have given people (and organizations) many ways to reshape the way they share information.
No profession stands to influence social media more than public relations because PR people intuitively understand the value of relationship marketing, says Paul Gillin in The New Influencers. Social media simply offers another way to build relationships. PR pros have jumped all over social media because it plays so naturally to their strengths as relationship managers.
Gillin has reported on the impacts of technology and media for 25 years. Now a consultant, he was the founding editor-in-chief of TechTarget.com and, prior to that, editor-in-chief of Computerworld magazine. He wrote The New Influencers “to help marketers understand the changes in influence patterns that social media is creating in their customer base.” That’s crucial because the next generation of customers will want to interact with businesses in very different ways.
Gillin borrows the idea for the title the 2003 book The Influentials, which argued that 10 percent of Americans determine what the other 90 percent buy. Influence the influentials, and your product or company can reach critical mass. The new influencers exert influence by aggregating the thoughts and opinions of others whom they trust.
Some examples:
The leading voices in the blogosphere are not corporations, not big companies, Gillin says. They are mostly individuals or small groups. As a rule, they have little or no administrative, marketing, sales, or circulation support. Their source of influence is links and comments.
A veteran magazine man and tech enthusiast, Gillin in a good position to point out the many things that distinguish new media from old. If you’re new to social media, this book will help you make sense of it all.
I like Gillin’s analogy of the campfire, probably the oldest social venue on the planet. “The top-down style of communication that has defined mass media for 150 years is artificial, but it was the best we could do given the limitations of technology,” Gillin says. “Now technology has changed the rules, and it becomes possible to recreate the campfire in cyberspace.”
If you’re a PR person or marketing person and you want to influence the influencers, you must find them and understand what’s relevant to them, Gillin says. But be aware that influence is not easy to measure. It doesn’t lend itself to a single number, and no single search engine can provide a definitive blogger ranking. You have to consider quantitative and qualitative measures.
Gillin’s New Influencers website provides multimedia and links to several of the people his book mentions. You can listen to audio interviews with several of them, including Dan Bricklin, coauthor of VisiCalc, podcasters Doug Kaye and Eric Schwartzman, and New Media PR man David Meerman Scott.
Gillin links to several kinds of new media sites, including link blogs, small business blogs, corporate blogs, opinion blogs, enthusiast blogs, and to podcasters.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: book review, My social media, PR, public relations, web2.0 | Permalink
Posted by paul baker
